"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." ~ Karl Marx

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

The George Orwell Collection

George Orwell was a lot of things. He was an anti-fascist, an anti-imperialist and an anti-Stalinist. He fought with the Troskyist POUM in the Spanish Civil War and never experienced much fame or fortune within his lifetime. Whatever your thoughts of the specifics of his politics, he was a genuine leftist and an iconic novelist of the English language. Here is a collection of his works.

7 comments:

Informing to British intelligence on "Stalinists" from among the English intelligensia is stomach-turning. As is his cartoon of socialism as totalitarianism. Reading Homage to Catalonia you'd almost forget that the only foreign country to support the Spanish Republic was the Soviet Union (with arms!) and thousands of "stalinists" volunteered and gave their lives to defeat Franco. But again, read Orwell and you'd literally have no idea. He is like a Christopher Hitchens that can write.

Yes we all know about that chapter late in his life, but he had a first hand experience with the Soviet Union's backed CP that literally destroyed the life blood of the Spanish Revolution all in the name of winning the Civil War.

And Mexico gave weapons to. The CPs had the loyalty of much of the working class, those that volunteered and fought weren't necessarily "Stalinist" per say

And there's no doubt that USSR supported for valuable for the national liberation movements of the global south and that it had some progressive achievements, but Stalinism was a historic disaster for the working class, I hope your not contesting that.

Stalinism doesn't exist. In the USA, it meant that socialism would actually be an internationalist idea, including African-Americans and their liberation – not just social clubs for Eastern European immigrants.

Stalinism is another word for socialism that scares the pants off the upper classes.

That said, the stalinization of the International Communist Movement was actually a mixed bag, which ultimately prioritized an abstract socialism (or "proletarianization") in lieu of the agency of working people.

Rremember: Winston Churchill was a white supremacist (and Orwell snitched TO THE BRITISH EMPIRE) and FDR presided over lynch law in half the USA. ONLY STALIN among world leaders of that time believed that ALL human beings were human, opposed colonialism and armed the Spanish Republic. Period.

Yet for some reason, the liberals never spit in anger when FDR is eulogized... or note that there were 2 million people in prison under Bill Fucking Clinton while he starved iraqis to death... but keep bitching about "stalinism"... Then again, every communist school teacher, journalist, trade unionist and leader was blacklisted in the USA with Bobby Kennedy's blessing. So, I guess its "stalinist" to fill in the missing history that McCarthyism and State Department Socialism eradicated.

and no, of course Stalin wasn't a racist, he also held all sorts of stupid views and sacrificed millions of people in the name of history and progressive. His collectivization policies were disastrous, Stalinist policy screwed Chinese workers in the 1920s, derailed the Spanish Revolution, colluded with Hitler in the 1930s, etc etc.

Stalinism was a historic defeat for the socialist movement, the objective conditions were so poor for socialist construction in one country attempts to impose that impossibility on Russian society inevitable resulted in disaster.

Let's not forget the fact that Stalinist CP's in Nazi occupied Europe often had legal newspapers as a result of the Stalin-Hitler pact before the invasion of Russia. (Though many local CPs did aid in the resistance even before the invasion)

The Moscow Trials, the execution of Trotsky... Socialism is the self-emancipation of the working class, Stalinism was a real phenomena, it wasn't even a progression on bourgeois society.

Retreat back to Marx, Kautsky, Luxemburg, even Lenin himself and you'll find nothing worth defending in Stalin.

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